Tell Me What The Rain Knows
by XSilverLiningsX
Summary: [Wolf's Rain Fusion, slight Hurk/Kai] It had been more than two years since his arrival at Colhen, having been drawn to the tiny town by the faint scent of lunar flowers. Kai intended to keep his true nature a secret, but...
1. Flower

"...Where did you get that flower?"

Startled, Tieve gasped in surprise and the flower pot she was holding in her hands slipped. Just before the pot could hit the wooden floor of the Inn and shatter into pieces, a gloved hand expertly caught it. Tieve breathed a sigh of relief before taking the flower pot from the outstretched hand with a warm smile.

"Fiona brought it back from the plains close by the Perilous Ruins a few days ago. I've been giving lots of water and sunlight to the poor thing, but the flower still won't open fully."

Kai didn't smile back, but his eyes were strangely fixated on the flower Tieve held in her hands. The oracle took a closer look at the single bloom: the withering white petals that had crumpled into a protective clump was a tearful sight, but the small plant still held an aura of determined strength as it clung onto life.

Tieve watched curiously as Kai touched one of the crumpled petals with an unusually gentle finger. The oracle had never seen the archer this relaxed in the presence of other people since he had come to Colhen, but it was a change she was happy to see.

After a moment Kai drew back, as if embarrassed by his behavior, and his face quickly shifted back into his customary scowl, but for once there was no trace of repressed anger in his expression.

"It lives off the moonlight. Water it as much as you can."

With that, the archer stalked away from the oracle and out of the front doors of the Inn. He was too engrossed in his thoughts that he didn't notice Evie, standing next to the mailbox, watching him go with a slightly confused expression on her face.

For a split second, the magician swore she had seen a large black wolf pass her by instead of Kai.


	2. Stamina

Lann hated Twilight Desert for many reasons.

The grains of sand always found a way into every nook and cranny of his armor, the temperature constantly fluctuated between blistering hot in the afternoons and frostbitingly cold during the nights, and, to top it off, it usually took more than a week to clear out the place of all the Fomors. But wait, there's more!

Above all else, the dual-wielder really, really hated that the desert took _forever_ to cross.

"Goddess... wait... up... Kai... seriously... ugh..." Lann stumbled to a stop, his hands on his knees, as he dragged heaving breaths into his burning lungs. The sun was practically cooking him into a baked crisp in his armor after he'd been sprinting non-stop for an _hour_ straight. The archer, fifteen meters up ahead, slowed down and glared at Lann for being so _slow_.

Lann ran a hand over his sweaty face as the other man began to jog back. Through his fingers, the dual-wielder mumbled, "How... can... he... possibly... keep... ugh... running... like... that..."

When Kai made it back to where the dual-wielder was standing, Lann could see that the archer was breathing heavily, but he wasn't sweating in the least even though he was equipped with heavy armor.

"Whatever... you're taking, I want... some. Seriously, you're... unbelievable. How can you even..." Lann straightened up with a wince as he felt a cramp pulling at his abdominal muscles. "Let's... take a break... before something... pops up and eats... me."

With an unamused look on his face, Kai turned to look to his left and squinted into the distance. After a moment, he said, "There's shade over there."

Sure enough, there were the ruins of a small gutted building and a tree less than thirty meters away. Lann breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, great... let's go..."

Kai took off at a steady pace that left Lann in the dust.

"By the Goddess..." Lann began his painstakingly slow limp-jog down the sand dune he was standing on top of. "That man's not human..."


	3. Jump

The thin air and the insane heights were unfamiliar inconveniences to the giant, seeing as he could never quite recall taking such dangerous mountain paths when he had traveled with his tribe. Karok had initially worried over his comrade's ability to withstand the punishing atmosphere (humans were so much more fragile than giants, but just as stubborn), but within a few moments it was clear that he had worried over nothing; the archer was just as comfortable up on the small ledges and crumbling footholds as he was on the teetering, rotted boats of the ship graveyard.

Karok crushed a tittering gremlin under his boots before charging at a flock of winged gremlins that screamed like harpies when he used his pillar to smash four of the Fomors into a pulp with a single swing. Just as he finished cracking a few more gremlin skulls, Karok heard the noise of Kai's crossgun cocking back with a dangerous click.

The giant rolled away just in time to feel a blast of scorching heat missing his head by a few inches. The huge woodman that almost bashed Karok's head in with its hammer howled as the flames ate away at it. Within a few moments, the Fomor was little more than a pile of ashes. The rest of the woodmen in the area had been blown apart from the force and their remains were scorched black from the fire.

Karok wiped at the sweat that had accumulated on his brow and leaned against his pillar. "Next time, a warning would be nice."

Kai's eyebrow raised and reloaded his crossgun with a practiced ease. "I did."

"Right." Karok rolled his eyes and huffed good-naturedly. Scanning the perimeter, Karok found another cart-and-lever not too far from where they were standing. However, the cart and the lever were both at the top of the next outcrop and there weren't any ladders or mini-structures to climb on top of to reach them. "Think you can shoot that lever up there?"

Kai moved closer and shot at the lever, but the cart refused to budge even an inch. It seemed like the lever was stuck.

"Maybe we forgot something down there? Let's go back and find another way up." Karok turned and began jogging to the rope bridge that connected the area to a lower level, but when he didn't hear any footsteps following he turned to look over his shoulder.

Karok's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when he saw the archer clearing the three meter height to the closest ledge with a running leap, landing smoothly on the toes of his boots. The next cliff was two meters away and another three meters above, but Kai didn't even blink as he vaulted onto that area with what seemed to be very little effort. The last cliff, the level where the lever and the cart was stuck on, was almost four meters up and the archer cleared that with another seemingly impossible jump.

Karok pinched himself. Nope, he wasn't dreaming.

Kai kicked at the lever a few times and the contraption whirred to life, sending the cart down below. Karok ran over and climbed on in, and Kai kicked the lever again so the cart creaked back upwards.

When he got to the top, Karok gave Kai a questioning look. "Can all humans do that? Or is just because of your prey drive ability?"

Kai shrugged and checked the magazine of his crossgun. "Lightning enchantment for boots."

Karok eyed Kai for a moment, the archer meeting his stare unflinchingly, and Karok decided to let it go. "Right. Well, then, let's keep going. We've wasted enough time as it is."

Kai nodded curtly and both men sprinted to the next area teeming with woodmen and flying gremlins.


	4. Speed

"Cover me!" Vella jumped into the foray, trusting Fiona to keep Lakoria busy enough so that she could hold down the overgrown snake with her chainblades. Her other teammate, Kai, was farther down her right and shooting arrows at the Fomor's weak points as quickly as he could.

_Just a little more_... Vella kept smashing away at the snake, flinging her blades in and out as quickly as she could while constantly dodging the wildly swinging tail. It had been more than half an hour since the battle started and they'd lost Lann when the damn snake swallowed him up, twin spears and all, a few minutes ago. Vella hoped that he was alright, but the man had taken a nasty blow to the head right before he disappeared down the Fomor's gullet.

Fiona sent another painful kick to the snake's scale-covered belly, but so far it hasn't coughed up their missing teammate.

Vella saw the snake give a tell-tale sign of another attack and yelled out as she ducked under a vicious swipe of a tail, "He's going under! Get back!"

Fiona rolled and retreated to a safe distance, making for the closest ballistae beacon. Vella jumped back when the snake plunged into the earth and disappeared from sight.

Vella saw Kai reaching one of the beacons just as the ground rumbled a few seconds later and Vella could only watch in horror as the snake reappeared behind the archer and charged at the man; she _knew_ that Kai was too far away from his dodge grapple anchor, so there was no chance he'd survive the hit.

Lakoria's mouth opened with a terrifying roar, and Vella threw her chainblades out as far as she could, but it was no use. The giant snake descended onto Kai...

_(there was a blur of indecipherable blackness that shot out from the narrow space under Lakoria, and if Vella blinked she would've missed it entirely)_

...and slammed into empty ground! The snake reared back, roared, and slithered away to attack Fiona. Vella threw her chainblades out, Fiona counterattacked, and arrows began pummeling the snake once again. Vella spared a glance over her shoulder and saw Kai nearly thirty meters away and thankfully unharmed.

Narrowly dodging a swipe of Lakoria's tail, Vella briefly wondered _when the hell did Kai get all the way over there_?

Lakoria hissed as ballistas rained down on its back, piercing through the armored back-scales. Vella threw her chainblades out even faster, getting ready to chain it down again once it recovered, but the suddeness of Kai sprinting past her (_hadn't he been almost 100 feet behind her three seconds ago?_) and shooting his prey drive chain at the giant snake made her pause for a moment.

The snake writhed as Kai jumped onto its head and shot a gleaming arrow right through its skull; Lakoria wobbled precariously, eyes rolling up into its sockets, before crashing onto its side with a rasping death gurgle. Just before its final twitches, the snake spat out something covered in bloody vomit.

It was Lann.

Vella followed Fiona as she ran over and pressed her fingers against the spear-wielder's exposed neck – there was a definitely a pulse, so the man was just unconscious. Vella let out a relieved laugh. Thank the Goddess that Lann didn't end up as snake chow.

Kai slid down from the snake's head, landing nonchalantly and returning a nocked arrow to his quiver. Vella's look lingered a moment longer than normal before she turned and helped Fiona haul up their unconscious teammate.

She'd ask later.


	5. Illusion

The Fomorian Base was surprisingly familiar to Hurk as he smashed his way through a horde of weapon-bearing goblins and gremlins. The place looked exactly like the Prairie Entrance and the Fomors weren't that impressive. This was almost _too_ easy.

Hurk turned his head and barely avoided an arrow whizzing past his face, the arrowhead barely half an inch away from his nose as flew by and nailed a goblin archer right through center of the Fomor's ugly face. "Hey, watch it!"

Kai ignored the other man and kicked a gremlin over the fences surrounding the area. The creature's screeching faded as it disappeared over the rocky outcropping.

From where he was standing, Hurk batted a goblin out of the area with his sword, sending it over the fence and tumbling over toe outcrop as well. Kai turned to look back at Hurk with an eyebrow raised, as if saying _really?_, and Hurk stuck out his tongue childishly before turning away and charging at another group of gremlins that had just arrived.

Too caught up in thrashing his enemy, Hurk didn't see the hastily boarded-up hole in the middle of the area that he had ran onto. The hole cover gave an alarming creak just as he smacked the last gremlin out of the way and before he knew it, the wood gave way from under his feet and he was_ falling_–

–and then all Hurk could feel was _**pain-pain-pain **_as the jagged teeth buried in the muscles of his bare shoulder prevented him from falling to his death in the extremely deep and dark hole.

Hurk looked up, the bright sunlight glaring right into into his eyes, and his vision swam. For a brief moment he could see a powerfully-built black wolf with gleaming eyes biting into his shoulder, and then he blinked and saw that Kai had grabbed onto his arm with both hands.

Kai tugged Hurk up slowly, visibly straining with the effort of hauling up a man that weighed almost as much as Karok. Hurk, his free hand holding onto his greatsword, dug his boots into the sides of the wall wherever he could and pushed himself up, scrabbling up the sheer wall inch by painstaking inch.

When he finally, _finally_, was dragged back onto level ground and Kai had let go, Hurk grabbed his bleeding shoulder. When he fell, he had ended up slamming face-first into the wall when Kai had caught him, but he definitely wasn't deranged or concussed; the bite marks on his shoulder were real, all right – they were quite deep, too.

Hurk's vision lurched again and between blinks he could see Kai's image flicker into the wolf, and then back to normal.

There was a splatter of blood on Kai's mouth, and the archer wiped it away with his sleeve as he got to his feet and walked over to where he had dropped his bow.

Hurk pushed himself to his feet, feeling vaguely faint, and stared at his teammate. There was still a smear of blood – his blood – at the edge of the other man's mouth.

Kai walked over to Hurk cautiously, as if expecting him to go crazy at any moment, with a strong health potion in his hand. He held it out, like a peace offering, but Hurk knew that was a weird thought because the grumpy archer he knew didn't _do_ peace offerings or apologies or whatever people called it.

"For you shoulder."

"... Thanks." Hurk took the potion and downed it in one gulp. The pain in his shoulder faded to a level akin to background noise.

"..."

"..."

Hurk couldn't take the awkward silence anymore. "So, you're a wolf too?"

Kai wasn't gaping in surprise, but it was as close as he'd ever get.

"You're not the only one that followed the flowers." Hurk grinned toothily and sheathed his greatsword. Within the next breath, the human turned into a barrel-chested and copper-furred wolf happily wagging his tail.

After a moment, a faint smile crept onto Kai's face. He dropped his illusion.


End file.
